


Lazarus

by codswallop



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B drabble, Depression, Gen, Nightmares, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-10
Updated: 2011-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-16 19:38:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codswallop/pseuds/codswallop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's worst nightmares, before he meets Sherlock, aren't the ones about the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lazarus

**Author's Note:**

> This is a trimmed-down, slightly revised version of [the ficlet I posted at sherlock_flashfic](http://sherlock-flashfic.dreamwidth.org/3426.html?#cutid1). I wasn't crazy about it, so I made it into a 221-B drabble (221 words, last word begins with B). I think like it better this way.

John has nightmares about being buried alive, in the weeks after he arrives home from Afghanistan.

In his nightmares he’s immobilised, somehow aware of a world containing light and action and _life_ taking place overhead. He observes the aboveground world from his limbo, in terrifying, supersaturated detail, but is unable to touch or be touched by what he sees.

The war dreams are different. It's true that in their aftermath he finds himself shaking, sweating, sobbing in horror and frustration--but that's because they _aren't_ nightmares. The upsetting part is _waking up._

The burial dreams are equally horrifying to wake from, but that's because his waking world resembles them so closely. Some days, John can't say for certain whether he’s awake or asleep.

He's ruminating on this one day, dragging himself through the crisp London air that ought to be weightless but feels instead like thick dark silt, when a voice pierces through to his consciousness, calling out his name.

He almost walks on, into the black. He almost doesn’t answer to his name at all.

*

John watches colour bleed back into his world, swirling out in the wake of Sherlock's coattails. He flexes his restored limbs and wonders, uneasily, what sort of subterranean existence he’s traded for another.

He’s just killed a man. It felt like relearning how to breathe.


End file.
